You’re reading about boarding schools for troubled teens because you have a troubled teen or pre-teen. That’s obvious. What isn’t so obvious is how to cope with it, and how to help him or her so that you all get through it. Your child has somehow changed into this angry, obstinate, disrespectful, uncooperative, rule-breaking, defiant person you hardly recognize. It’s a nightmare for all of you, and there’s no escape for you-you can’t not deal with it.

This negative behavior has developed, according to some experts in child behavior, because as your child was going through the developmental period sometimes called the “Terrible Twos”, with its negativity and constant pushback, he somehow got stuck there. If this is the case with your child, he/she has probably been oppositional and difficult ever since those days.

Another viewpoint is that the angry, defiant teen is responding to “negative interactions” with parents or other authority figures. Whatever the cause, you’re now dealing with a child you can’t throw out of the house, because he’s too young, but you can’t control, because he’s too big. As his parent, you’re responsible for any negative or anti-social behavior, but he won’t follow the rules-yours or society’s.

How are you and he and the family going to survive, and how can you help him-especially when he rebuffs every effort you make to help or even to relate to or spend time with him? Not a pretty picture, and hopefully your situation isn’t as bad as this, but in a lot of homes, that’s exactly the situation.

You’ve probably had a child behavior expert do an evaluation. If you haven’t, it would be wise to do so. It’s important to determine, if you don’t already know, whether there is some other issue underlying the negative behavior-and there very often is. Depression is very common in these children. ADHD is often a complicating factor. School problems, or problems with peer relationships, can lead to feelings of frustration or rejection that get expressed as anger and defiance.

Sometimes, dealing with these underlying issues with medication or therapy, or even with just understanding and counseling, can make a huge difference. In any event, it’s important to have the evaluation, because the proper approach and treatment for one child with one set of problems and underlying issues may be very different from the best approach for another child with different issues, even though both are acting out in similar angry and defiant ways.

Probably, if you’re looking at boarding schools for “troubled teens”, you have already tried “Tough Love”, or some variant of it. You may have tried counseling. You may have tried medication. You may have entered a “Parent Management Training” class, where you are taught more effective ways of dealing with both negative and positive behaviors. If none of that has worked, because your situation is more extreme, or for whatever reason, perhaps it’s time for boarding school.

It’s a terribly difficult decision. Boarding schools are expensive. Also, you don’t want to think that you’re abandoning your child, nor do you want him or her to feel abandoned.

Boarding schools come in several different flavors. There are “Residential Treatment Centers” and “Residential Boarding Schools”. There are “Schools for Troubled Youths”. There are “Therapeutic Boarding Schools”. Sometimes the differences are in name only, but as you can imagine, each institution will have its own stamp and emphasis. Common to all of them is that they remove the child from the current environment and the tense situation at home-which alone can be very helpful.

Boarding schools provide discipline and structure, and usually group and individual therapy.

They attempt to discover what’s underlying the anger, defiance, and rule-breaking, knowing that just insisting on a change in behavior isn’t likely to be effective if underlying issues aren’t addressed, and if the teen isn’t provided emotional support to deal with them. Gradually, the child is taught to quit blaming others for his own problems, and to take responsibility for his own actions and decisions. Of course, this is a little easier to do in the boarding school environment, because the staff doesn’t get caught up in the drama that parent and child can create.

The better schools insist on heavy family involvement in the entire process.

Of course, you want to investigate the potential schools. The National Association of Therapeutic Schools and Programs (natsap.org) has some thoughts about how to choose a school, including a list of about 80 questions you might want to ask. You want to know about accreditation and licensing, staff credentials, clinical qualifications and oversight, academic programs, how the schools is prepared to deal with emergencies, their record of outcomes and results, etc. As you start making calls, having a printout of this list would be very helpful.

Surrendering your child to a residential school is a difficult and important decision. Take comfort knowing that if that seems like the right thing to do, the change of environment and the reduction of tension, not to mention that you’re putting him or her in the hands of skilled professionals, usually results in good outcomes.

Bob Harvey enjoys writing on health and family issues, and also enjoys uncovering existing resources and helping give them wider distribution. For more on “Angry Teens”, visit Troubled Teens Boarding

Author: R. Harvey
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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